Meet our team
Here we are, the C.A.O.S. team
JULIA HART
Multi Disciplinary Artist
ALISON BOURNES
Ceramicist
NICOLA OSBORNE
Mixed Media Artist
NANINE PACHY
Art Student
MARCELLA GALLAGHER
Art Student
Julia Hart is a mixed media artist working in inks, acrylics, watercolours, & print media.
Based in Benfleet, Essex she finds the everchanging views, light & landscape of the Estuary a constant source of inspiration. She is also greatly inspired by animals, photographs, myths, poetry, art processes and concepts.
Whatever the subject it is always through the prism of colour. Her work is largely impressionistic as she seeks to create the emotional response a subject can generate.
Julia has been a (mostly) self-taught artist for seven years. Recently, attending a Print (Etching) course at the Royal Drawing School, London.
You can currently find Julia’s work on the Leigh Art Trail, at exhibitions with Southend Art Club and at the Old Leigh Artists Market.
Julia is now delighted in 2025 to work from a studio at HOFS. Visitors are very welcome – just contact her for a time you would like to visit.
Instagram: @julestwoharts
Alison Bournes is a ceramicist. She enjoys working with the theme of the human condition, often choosing to work in clay as it is such a responsive medium.
The human figure, human stories and historical information often inform her work, she enjoys exploring the light and shade of lives lived.
She is self-taught and over the past 10 years has exhibited her work in London, Kent, Essex and Suffolk. She works in a small home studio in Essex where she also teaches ceramic skills on a one-to-one basis.
Some of her work is held by Southend Museums and Historic England and she is a member of The Thames Group of Artists.
Instagram: @tin_roof_studio_essex
Nicola Osborne is a mixed media painter, creating from her home studio in Benfleet. She studied Illustration at KIAD.
After her degree, she qualified as an art teacher and taught art for 20 years
.Nicola is working as a full-time artist. As an intuitive painter, she enjoys the unexpected, emerging shapes and marks evolve the of variety of mediated. Nicola mainly works in acrylic inks and acrylics and her work is often, based on the natural world, focusing on colour and its effects on the viewer. An emotional reaction to the arrangement of opaque and translucent hues and pigments, is what she strives to achieve.
Nicola employs the language of overlapping and intersecting forms created in layers and glazes of multiple media. Her intention is to promote a sense a of intricacy and other worldliness.
Nicola’s paintings are firmly rooted in the connection to location. The nearby estuary landscape and its flora, are the foundation of artistic exploration By using repetition of symbols and geometric shape, she creates an abstract world.
Instagram: @mrso1234rs
As a vintage curator, Nanine draws on her knowledge of design history and trends to source and collect unique décor items and vintage clothing for retail and styling, with an emphasis on quality craftsmanship and sustainability.
Nanine has a background in working with children, young people and adults to promote positive mental health and well-being. She is currently studying for a degree in fine art and involved in a number of community projects.
Marcella Gallagher after a 32 year career in banking, she is pursuing her lifelong passion as an art student,. For years, she has channelled creativity by running art clubs in schools, assisting children’s theatre groups, helping the children to grow in confidence. Her main focus is on performance art and painting. Her work is driven by a desire to address injustice. Marcella creates art for those who have been bullied or overlooked, using my pieces to give a voice to people who deserve to shine.
If you have any questions, please contact us
